This 404-HP Mid-Engined Honda Sports Car Isn’t Real, but We Sure Wish It Was

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What you’re looking at is the rumored baby NSX that has been talked about among Honda fanatics for quite some time. We have bad news and good news about it: It’s not a real car, but you can drive it—at least virtually. The Honda Sports Vision Gran Turismo is a digitally rendered concept car made specifically for the latest edition of the Gran Turismo game for Playstation 4, called Gran Turismo Sport. It has us salivating over the possibility of a real-life Honda sports car in this same vein.

A mid-engined two-door coupe with futuristic but not outlandish styling cues, the Sports Vision certainly shares some visual DNA with the current Acura NSX. Its low, angular front end is similar, as are the large air intakes aft of the doors. Although it doesn’t actually exist, Honda says that the Sports Vision Gran Turismo only weighs 1982 pounds thanks to several carbon-fiber bits. That featherweight construction makes the car’s hypothetical powertrain—a 404-hp turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder with VTEC mated to an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission—particularly enticing, as it would give the car a highly impressive power-to-weight ratio. A tight two-seat cabin features an unconventionally shaped spaceship-like steering wheel and a minimalist dashboard with two climate-control knobs, a few toggle switches, a push-button shifter, and not much else.

As for such a car’s real-life implications, we don’t want to indulge in too much wishful thinking. But there has been plenty of talk of a new Honda-badged sports car in recent years. We first entertained the possibility of Honda’s mid-engined Porsche Cayman fighter in 2015, while more recent rumors have centered around a revived S2000 roadster, possibly with hybrid power. At this point, we can only live out our fantasies in the video-game world and hold out hope that this virtual Honda is more than just talk.